The Cambridge martyrs.
It was not only in what concerned scholarship that the travail of the Reformation belonged to Cambridge. It gave, in the person of Fisher, the only member of the episcopal bench who died for denying the royal supremacy. Early in the reign of Henry VIII. the first group of Cambridge Lutherans gave other martyrs: Bilney, like Barnes, had carried his faggot and recanted Lutheran opinions before Wolsey, but afterwards took new courage and went to the stake for them. The cause left smouldering by the death of Barnes, Bilney, and George Stafford (a fellow of Pembroke) was rekindled by Latimer. Henry himself had examined another Cambridge reformer, John Nicholson (“Lambert”) who denied the corporal presence in the eucharist, and that royal and rigid sacramentarian had condemned him. “Pleasant Taylor” “making himself merry with the stake” was another Cantabrigian.[406]The first man to die for his faith when Mary’s reign opened was Rogers of Pembroke[407]; and “the hardiest” of the Marian Martyrs was another Cambridge man, Bradford. As she had nurtured the only martyr-bishop on the Catholic side, so Cambridge nurtured the Protestant group of prelates who died at the stake: Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer are three Cambridge martyrs whose only title to be known as “the Oxford martyrs” is that Oxford burnt them. Itmust not be forgotten, also, that one of the fifteen heroic London Carthusians, martyred at Tyburn in 1535, was William Exmew of Christ’s.
The death of Fisher, chancellor of the university, was followed by a wholesale ejection of the professors of the ancient learning, and the man who died for his denial of that ‘anglican solecism’ the royal supremacy was immediately succeeded by the man who first suggested it to Henry—Thomas Cromwell.[408]
The Puritan.
The next religious movement in the country was the Puritan, against which we know that Elizabeth fought as lustily as Henry had combated Lutheranism. Despite the fact that there were Puritan nuclei, as there had earlier been Lutheran nuclei, at Cambridge, Puritanism was eventually imposed on the university only by the same violent means as had banished the old religion—wholesale ejections. The Anglican heads of colleges were turned out, under Oliver, to be replaced by Puritan Masters, in precisely the same way as Thomas Cromwell had replaced the Catholics by men who accepted the royal supremacy.
Early Presbyterianism.
One of these early nuclei of Puritanism was fomented by Thomas Cartwright, and Thomas Aldrich, Master of Corpus, became the leader of the Cambridge Puritans. Cartwright was one of the first Presbyterians, and canvassed the English counties in the interest of that form of Church government.The movement was checked by Elizabeth, and Cartwright was driven from his professorship. Later on the Puritan Tuckney was Regius professor of Divinity as Cartwright had been Margaret Professor. Presbyterianism was not congenial to the university: Hall Bishop of Norwich, the satirist who was a contemporary of Shakespeare, and Archbishop Williams the life-long opponent of Laud, both went to the Tower for protesting against the acts of the Long Parliament, and Hall though he was a noted ‘low-churchman’ remonstrated against the proposed abolition of episcopacy. Among still more eminent Cantabrigians, Jeremy Taylor was as much opposed to its abolition as Milton favoured it: but when, in 1643-4, the Westminster Assembly met, Wallis the Cambridge scientist acted as its secretary, the Oxonian Selden being another of the thirty laymen present at its deliberations.
The Brownists or Independents.
Milton had no liking for the Westminster Assembly; with Cromwell he sympathised with the rising Independent Congregations who took their principles from the Brownists of Elizabeth’s time. Of the five movements which were still to sweep over the face of religious England, two originated in Cambridge. How inept the university is to the creation of such schools of thought, how alien to its genius such creations are, may be gauged by the comparatively puny character of these two movements. The Brownists and the Cambridge Platonists do not suggest a world set ablaze; but though ineffective asschools both of them represented far-reaching principles, and have left a lasting impression on Anglo-Saxon religion. It is easy to show this in the case of the Brownists: for Browne was the spiritual father of the Pilgrim Fathers, of the men who colonised a continent to obtain space to form those free Church communities which many Englishmen regarded as the logical completion of the principles of the Reformation. The English refugees at Amsterdam were disciples and adherents of Robert Browne, and it was a little company
A.D.1620.
of Brownists which eventually set out in two ships for the new world, one of which—the “Mayflower”—reached what is now the State of Massachusetts. The Brownists were the first party of separatists from the newly established Church in England, and the old and new worlds recognise in them the true spiritual forbears of all Independent and Congregational Churches; whose ecclesiastical polity requires that each congregation should suffice to itself, be complete in itself.
The Latitudinarians.
In the next century arose the liberal church movement of Hales, Chillingworth, and Jeremy Taylor. Falkland, the great layman who inspired it, had been educated at Dublin university, but was entered for S. John’s College as early as 1621, and claimed in after life, in a letter to the then Master, to have been a member of that society. Taylor was a Cambridge man who had removed to Oxford; Hales and Chillingworth were both distinguished Oxford scholars. The distinction made by Taylor and Chillingworth between essential and non-essential articles ofbelief was very far ahead of the theoretical and practical narrowness of the German Protestantism around them. The problem at issue was stated by Stillingfleet,[409]“fresh from the generous intellectual life of Cambridge,” on the eve of the Restoration: Does there exist, in regard to Church government, any suchjus divinumas would prevent men, under the stress of circumstances, learning from each other, and arriving at unity? The doctrine ofaccommodationstated in hisEirenicum, though it was not in advance of the earlier speculation of Ussher, Chillingworth, Taylor, and Hales, anticipated later developments of theological speculation with which we are all familiar.
Deism.
The xvii and xviii centuries saw the rise and progress of Deism. Lord Herbert of Cherbury[410]“the father of deism” was educated at Oxford; the great opponent of his doctrines was the Cambridge philosopher Samuel Clarke. Nevertheless deism was not a university movement. Bolingbroke, Morgan, and Blount (1654-93) were at no university; Shaftesbury (b. 1621) and Tindal had been at Oxford; Woolston and Anthony Collins (b. 1676) had been at Cambridge; and Toland after a residence at three other universities, retired to Oxford. Conyers Middleton, librarian of Trinity, was another opponent of the deists. Like unitarianism, deism undoubtedly responds to a certain temper of English religious speculation and sentiment,but apparently to no very wide-spread temper; and the success of English deism was consummated not here but on the continent.
The Evangelical movement.
The evangelical movement is entirely associated with the names of John and Charles Wesley and Whitfield—with a group of Oxford men. There was no principle of ecclesiastical polity and none of philosophy underlying it: it was a fervent religious revival begun within the Church of England and ending outside it, and as such the great influence it has exerted would appear to have presented few attractions for the Cambridge mind.
The Tractarian movement, and the earlier Cambridge movement.
The ‘Tractarian movement’ which also arose as a renewal of religious life in the Church of England, was, like Wesleyanism, due exclusively to Oxford men. A still earlier ‘High Church’ movement—a ritualistic movement before ‘Tractarianism’—had however found its home in Cambridge under the auspices of Andrewes, Wren, and Cosin. These three men, later bishops of Winchester, Ely, and Durham respectively, established a type of Reformed churchmanship not only more tolerant and scholarly than Laud’s but one which was more genuinely a university movement; for it was indigenous—its patrons were all heads of Cambridge houses—and it did not meet, as did Laud’s efforts at Oxford, with dislike and rejection at the university. Two hundred years passed before the Tractarian movement at Oxford reproduced its likeness and tendered it to Englishmen as thevera effigiesof the Church ofEngland.[411]The influence on religion of Charles Simeon and other Cambridge men in ante-Tractarian days should also be remembered; neither should it be forgotten that the liberal anti-Calvinistic churchmanship of Peter Baro and Overall was first taught by Cambridge men.
The age of Elizabeth and the New Learning.
The pre-eminence of Cambridge during the age of Elizabeth would be in itself sufficient proof of its relation to the New Learning—to the revival of letters and of Greek, the rise of experimental science, and the theological speculations of the century. Round Elizabeth there gathered from the first to the last days of her reign a brilliant group of men—scholars, poets, tutors, prelates, lawyers, statesmen, philosophers, travellers, explorers. Every name we chance upon, every man who influenced the court, the letters, the science of the day, hails from Cambridge. The tutors of Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth had all been Cambridge men, and Cambridge men were appointed as their physicians and chaplains. Names like those of Skelton, Fisher, Erasmus, Croke, Tyndale, Ascham, Sir Thomas Smith, and Cheke; of Spenser, Gabriel Harvey, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson; of Bacon, Gilbert, Harvey and Caius, conjure up a picture of the scholarship of the age, of the new stir in thought, letters, and learning. Let us look at two other well-defined groups of Elizabethans—the statesmen and thechurchmen. The two Cecils, Walsingham, Haddon and Fletcher (Masters of the Requests), Bacon, Knollys, Sussex, Smith, and Mildmay were all Cambridge men; and so were all Elizabeth’s great prelates: Lancelot Andrewes, her chaplain, and dean of Westminster, and the primates Parker, Grindal, and Whitgift: and they represented every party in the country. Fulke Greville the most fortunate of the Queen’s favourites, Sir John Harrington her godson, and Essex, were also Cambridge men. Among the gallant little company of the first adventurers one only is known to have studied at a university, and he was at Cambridge: Sir Thomas Gresham conducted the expedition fitted out by Raleigh which resulted in the discovery of Virginia—named after the virgin queen—and in the introduction of the tobacco leaf. Cavendish, a Corpus man, brought to England the tobacco called after him. Clifford, third earl of Cumberland, a Trinity man, was one of the early privateers and navigators; and young Roger Manners, of Queens’ and Corpus, went the “Islands Voyage” with Robert Devereux who had studied at Trinity. Even Drake, who was at no university, is known as a Cambridge benefactor, and was as we have seen a large subscriber to the chapel of Corpus Christi College.
In the last place the New Learning of the Tudor age was carried from Cambridge to the sister university. It was so well understood that Cambridge represented this new learning that Wolsey went there for the men who, by colonising Cardinal College, were to introduceit at Oxford; and Fox of Pembroke founded a belatedCorpus Christi Collegewith the express purpose of erecting a monument in Oxford to the Renaissance.
The schoolmasters.
The last half of the xv century brought with it the great schoolmasters. Mulcaster of Eton and King’s was master of Merchant-Taylors’ on its foundation; Colet’s school, S. Paul’s, sent to Cambridge for its second head, and five of its first eight head masters were Cambridge and King’s men. King’s College has supplied a large proportion of the Provosts and head masters of Eton, many of the famous masters of Harrow, and a King’s man counts as the creator of Rugby “as it now is.” Ascham’s “Schoolmaster” was epoch-making, and his connexion with his university was much closer than William Lily’s with Oxford.
The Royal SocietyA.D.1660-62.
The brilliant epoch of Elizabeth spent, intellectual life smouldered during the reigns of the first two Stuarts and the Protectorate, to be renewed and rekindled not by fresh literary activity but by the inquisitive temper which invaded the nation as it emerged, with the Restoration, from civil conflict and the slough of doctrinal wrangling. This inquisitiveness took shape in the institution of the Royal Society. Thefoyerof the Royal Society was London, although some of its most distinguished members migrated later with Wilkins to Oxford. Of the eminent men who formed the first Royal Society Wallis, Wilkins, Foster, Jonathan Goddard, Sir William Ball, Lawrence Rooke,Sir William Petty, Ward the mathematician, Ray, Woodward the mineralogist, Flamsteed, Sloane, Boyle, Halley, Chief-Justice Hale, Lord Keeper Guilford, with Sprat the Bishop of Rochester (its historian), Cowley and Dryden (its poets), and Sir Robert Moray—Wallis, Foster, Rooke, Ray, Woodward, Flamsteed, Guilford, Cowley, and Dryden, were Cantabrigians. Four of the most prominent, Ward, Boyle, Sloane and Ball, were at no university; Goddard went from Oxford to Cambridge where he graduated; Petty though he became Professor of Anatomy at Oxford was educated at foreign universities; Moray was at S. Andrews and Paris; Wilkins, Halley, Hale, and Sprat were at Oxford. Among the first fellows there came from Oxford Christopher Wren, John Evelyn, Hook of the microscope, Sydenham: More the Platonist, Sir William Temple, Willughby the ornithologist, and Grew, came from Cambridge. Two more of Charles’s courtiers joined Moray, Kenelm Digby from Oxford, and Villiers Duke of Buckingham from Cambridge.
The Cambridge Platonists.
The next movement in English thought was both religious and philosophical. When Latitudinarianism ceased to be ecclesiastical it passed from Oxford and became identified with the sister university.[412]Here it was handled by a group ofmen, from the two colleges Emmanuel and Christ’s, so as to embrace a moral and political philosophy, to which the termPlatonistis only aptly ascribed if it be meant to stand for the “mass of transcendental thought”; that traditional Platonism of the speculative schools which had succeeded one another down the centuries, always at war with nominalism and constantly asserting the transcendent character of moral ideas and the reality of free will. Hobbism came to assail this position; for Hobbes applied Bacon’s method to the moral and social order, and found the basis for them in certain obvious facts of human nature. The spirit of enquiry set afoot by the Cambridge Platonists was none the less real because it was opposed to such tenets. They set themselves, in fact, to enquire whether authority and tradition should guide men in matters of faith. They asserted that reason was supreme, and they sought to place Christianity again—to place Protestantism for the first time—under the protection of that noble spiritual idealism which the great thinkers of the early Church had chosen for the new faith; to penetrate Christianity with philosophy.[413]
The early Latitudinarianism was merely an essay in liberal ecclesiastical polity. The new movement was something more, something finer. Cambridge nowgathered up the floating philosophical speculation which existed in the xvii century side by side with the intense absorption in dogmatic wranglings, the rapid growth of sects—of Anabaptists, Antinomians, anti-Trinitarians, Arians. “A kind of moral divinity,” as Whichcote’s tutor, the Puritan Tuckney, cried out in alarm, was to be substituted for theological polemic. The movement indeed was due to the combination of a higher spirituality than the Puritan with the new spirit of bold enquiry in moral and speculative fields[414]—it constituted a Cambridge reaction against the trammels of Puritanism. It was the first of all English religious movements (not excepting Wycliffism) to ally a growth of the religious sentiment with the demand for a wide and liberal theoretical basis to theology. At the head of this theological movement stands Benjamin Whichcote (b.1609) tutor of Emmanuel, who numbered among his pupils Wallis, Smith, and Culverwell, and who was afterwards Provost of King’s. Ralph Cudworth (b.in Somersetshire 1617) is perhaps the central figure: he is great as a moral philosopher, great in his impartial statement of an opponent’s case, great even in his freedom from the party and political heat which consumedhis contemporaries.[415]In John Smith (b.1616) of Emmanuel[416]the movement becomes more speculative, his was the finest and most richly stored mind, and his “Select Discourses” perhaps mark the culminating point of the Cambridge school. There remains Henry More (b.1614) the better known name, of Christ’s College, the exponent of Descartes, the ardent follower of Plato, from whom he learnt “that something better and higher than the knowledge of human things constitutes the supreme happiness of man.” HisEnchiridion ethicumandEnchiridion metaphysicumwere the text books of the school.
This academic group forms, as Tulloch points out, not only “one of the most characteristic groups in the history of religious and philosophical thought in England,” but one of the most homogeneous. Whichcote’s aphorism “There is nothing more unnatural to religion than contentions about it” sums an epoch in religious thought. Questions of Church order and Church policy were left aside, to philosophise; the clash of ecclesiastical parties ceased to trouble, and an academic enquiry into the relation of philosophy to religion takes its place. Neither Puritan nor Presbyterian had brought any such liberating attitude towards theology, for which indeed the early Protestantism cared not one jot, but which has never entirely died out of England since the speculations of the CambridgePlatonists.[417]The Englishman—fed with the crude dogmatism of Luther, the arid ecclesiasticism of Laud, the dull fancy of the Puritan, and the intolerance of all three—now for the first time was called dispassionately to consider the claims of the philosophical reason, the eternal distinction between essential and non-essential—a distinction anathema to the ordinary Protestant—fundamental and non-fundamental, between the reality and the figure; to the claims, in fine, of those ontological verities on which belief in the revealed verities ultimately depends. A “rational Christian eclecticism” was for the first time presented to Protestants, and in so far anticipated the principle upon which the problems of the present day attend for solution. The values to be assigned to the notions of “orthodoxy,” of dogma—who around them had ever thought of such things before! At Oxford it has always been a question of form, of Church order; but at Cambridge a question of substance, an enquiry into the criteria of truth, the credentials of theories.
Nevertheless, the Cambridge Platonists were ineffective. Their philosophy lacked a touchstone, concentration; and they allied its fate to a ridiculous bibliology. For More, who taught at the university which gave us our school of biblical critics—Erasmus, Colenso, Westcott, Lightfoot, Hort—the wisdom of the Hebrew had been transmitted to Pythagoras, andfrom Pythagoras to Plato, who thus becomes the heir of divine (the Hebrew) philosophy. Such a doctrine was a serious embarrassment to a cause in the age of Hobbes; it meant that the rational and criticalcriteriaof the day went unutilised, and no doctrine can withstand such a charge. There was, too, a certain lack of the spirit of adventure, that gallant spirit which is not out of place even in philosophy, and of the courage which belongs to enthusiasm. The appeal to reason made by Hooker had debouched as Latitudinarianism; Laud and George Herbert had both opposed it; but Puritan England was stronger than both and would have none of either. The Platonists stood between them—called upon the Laudian to modify his conception of authority, upon the Puritan to admit the claims of reason, enriched Latitudinism with a philosophy. They were not listened to. None the less thevia mediathey offered has penetrated English thought. The Englishman favours reason but is no Hobbist, he must have his God behind the machine; he likes the supremacy of reason with a nebulous Plato behind it—not the real Plato, but a Plato to hurl as a weapon in the face of the materialist, without understanding too much about it. The ‘Cambridge mind’ hit on a middle term, a resting place for speculation and for faith, which suits the Englishman in the long run better than either Laud or Hobbes. In Cudworth we have that mind typified—that union of toleration with half lights which triumphs in England. Very bold speculation is not the Englishman’sforte. His intellect in suchgestais not clear-cut, and his practical sense is always compatible with unturned-out-corners of mysticism, prejudices, reverences false and true—all the haziness made by those useful half lights loved by a people who do not like to be mystified, but do not wish to be too much enlightened.
And if we ask why Cambridge should be Platonist, the answer is because it always resisted the Aristotelianism of the Schools. Reaction against scholasticism had brought Plato to Florence in the xv century, it made Plato at home in Cambridge in the xviith. We have called Cambridge the laboratory of the Reformation; there too, we see, was made the first attempt to reconcile Protestantism with philosophy: in undoing the servitude of the latter to religion, which had been the mark of the middle ages, the Cambridge Platonists did away with medievalism, joined hands, behind its back, with that Neo-Platonism of the Alexandrine schools which had influenced the early Church, defied, of course, scholasticism, and prepared the place for our modern moral sciences tripos.
Modern science.
We have already seen that Cambridge is the representative in England of the scientific movement which has changed the face of the modern world. It may perhaps be pretended that the stages of its development in Europe have been marked by the great men emanating from this one university. The names of Bacon, Gilbert, Harvey, Flamsteed, Newton, Darwin, are signposts of the direction which science was to take and landmarks of its achievements.
ADDENBROKE’S HOSPITAL IN TRUMPINGTON STREET This building, as we now see it, was remodelled by Sir M. Digby Wyatt 1864-65.ADDENBROKE’S HOSPITAL IN TRUMPINGTON STREETThis building, as we now see it, was remodelled by Sir M. Digby Wyatt 1864-65.
William Gilbert the discoverer of terrestrial magnetism and of the affinity of magnetic and electric action, was praised by Galileo, while Erasmus called him “great to a degree which is enviable.” Flamsteed began that series of observations which initiated modern astronomy, Horrox came still earlier, and they have been followed by such Cantabrigians as Newton, Nevil Maskelyne, Herschell, Airy and Adams. Newton and Darwin are two of the greatest names in the history of the physical and physiological sciences—they stand out as creators of epochs in the march of human knowledge: on Newton’s statue in Trinity chapel are inscribed the wordsqui genus humanum ingenio superavit—of whom else could they be spoken?—Darwin has revolutionised our thoughts in spheres far removed from those directly affected by his great hypothesis.
When we turn to consider the relation of these distinguished sons to the university which bred them, it is interesting to find how close this has always been. From the first makers of Cambridge to the last, from its earliest distinguished sons to its latest, the individual’s relation to the university has been a close one and the same names come down the centuries and create a homogeneity in Cambridge history which has certainly not received its due meed of recognition. A group of persons—of families—is already assembled in this remote eastern corner of England in the xiii and xiv centuries which contains the elements of our university history: Stantons, de Burghs, Walsinghams,Beauforts, Clares, Greys, Pembrokes are there—and Gaunt and Mortimer the roots of Lancaster and York. If we had looked in upon the town earlier still, in the xi and xii centuries, we should have found Picot—the ancestor of the Pigotts whose name is recorded in Abingdon Pigotts hard by—who succeeded to the honours of Hereward the Wake[418]and who founded the church dedicated to the Norman saint Giles; Peverel who brought the Austin canons to Cambridge, Clare, de Burgh, Fitz-Eustace (or Dunning) and, by the side of these companions of the Conqueror, the sons of the soil—the Frosts and Lightfoots. In the xiii century there were the Dunnings assisting the Merton scholars to establish themselves, Mortimer endowing the Carmelites, the Veres[419]establishing the Dominicans, de Burghs, Walsinghams, Walpoles, and Bassetts,[420]the Greys, and Manfields,[421]and “Cecil at the Castle”—all of whom appear in Edward I.’s Hundred Rolls.
The name of Clare figures on every page of the history of the Plantagenets. The first Gilbert de Clare had been employed to terrorise the East Anglians who held out against William; another Gilbert is at the head of the barons, his son is the guardian of MagnaCharta, andhisgranddaughter founded Clare College. She also built the Greyfriars house at Walsingham in 1346, was, with her kinsmen the Monthermers a great benefactor to the first Augustinian priory founded a hundred years earlier at Stoke Clare[422]and found time
A.D.1248.
to send timber from her estates towards the building of the king’s Hall, as Queen Elizabeth sent a similar gift just two hundred years afterwards to the king’s college of Trinity. The Clares had received 95 lordships in Suffolk, which formed “the honour of Clare,” and they gave their name to the county in Ireland. Through Ralph de Monthermer the founders of Clare and Pembroke were allied, for he was Elizabeth de Clare’s stepfather, and afterwards brother-in-law to Aymer de Valence (see Tables I, II).
A.D.1198.A.D.1225.
We first hear of the de Burghs in 1198 when Thomas, brother to Hubert the king’s chamberlain, became guardian to a Bury ward. In 1225 a de Burgh was bishop of Ely, and a hundred years later John de Burgh the 4th earl of Connaught and 2nd earl of Ulster married with Elizabeth de Clare. Towards
A.D.1385
the end of the xiv century another de Burgh, author of the “Pupilla oculi” was chancellor of the university, and it is he who purchased the land of S. Margaret’s hostel in 1368.
A.D.1291.
The connexion of the Mortimers with Cambridge also dates from the xiii century: Guy de Mortimerfigures in the Cambridge Hundred Rolls as the benefactor of the Carmelite friars, and sixty years later Thomas, son of Sir Constantine de Mortimer, ceded land for King’s Hall.
The name of Walsingham occurs as that of a prior of Ely in 1353. The Walsinghams held two manors
A.D.1344.
in Suffolk, besides land in Cambridge part of which was sold to the king for the site of King’s Hall.
A.D.1290-1299.
There was a Ralph Walpole bishop of Ely, and subsequently of Norwich in the time of Edward I., who gave a messuage to Peterhouse as early as 1290. The Walpoles continued to figure on the roll of this college till in the xvi century the Walpole of that day fled with the Jesuit Parsons to Spain after the trial of Campian; he became vice-rector at Valladolid but was eventually martyred at York five years before the close of the century. Robert and Horace Walpole continued the Cambridge traditions of their family.
With the xiv century other names appear: the Scropes, Gonvilles, Stantons,[423]the families of Cambridge and of Croyland, Haddon,[424]Zouche,[425]and Cavendish, and last but not least Valence, and the house of Gaunt and Beaufort.
The connexion of the Scropes with Cambridgeprobably dates from the earlier half of the xiv century. Scropes, as we have seen, figure among the chancellors of the university in that century, and were allied not only to the Mortimers but to the Gonvilles: when therefore we find the representative of the house of Valence who is also a grandson of Roger Mortimer, and whose son married a descendant of the founder of Clare, engaged in a political intrigue with Gaunt,
A.D.1371.
Scrope, and the Master of Pembroke in 1371, and the Scropes[426]Greys and Mortimers conspiring with
A.D.1414.
Richard Earl of Cambridge[426a]early in the next century, we gain a very definite impression of a Cambridgecoterie.
“—— Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, in their dear care,And tender preservation of our person”——
“—— Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, in their dear care,And tender preservation of our person”——
“—— Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, in their dear care,And tender preservation of our person”——
are the words which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Henry V. before his discovery of their treachery.
Shakespeare and Cambridge men.
Indeed the historical plays of Shakespeare, from the dawn of our university history in the reign of John to its zenith in that of Henry VIII., place prominently before us our Cambridge protagonists. In “King John” the names of Louis the Dauphin, Chatillon, and de Burgh recall the Cambridgehistory of two centuries. Chatillon is here the ambassador of Philip of France who calls upon John to surrender his “borrowed majesty” into Prince Arthur’s hands; and in the next century Marie de Chatillon and Elizabeth de Burgh are building colleges. Sir Stephen Scrope figures in “Richard II.” In “Henry IV.” Scroop Archbishop of York and Edward Mortimer, and in “Henry V.” the Earl of Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, appear. In “Henry VI.,” with Beaufort, Mortimer, Suffolk, Somerset, Buckingham and Stafford, Stanley, Woodville, and Margaret of Anjou—all of whom were to play a part in Cambridge history—we have Bassett of the Lancastrian faction, and Vernon representing the Yorkists. Thedramatispersonaeof this play thus include thedramatis personaeof King’s and Queens’ Colleges, of Haddon Hall, of Magdalene, and Christ’s. In “Richard III.” Rotherham of York appears, with many others who belong to Cambridge in the xv century; while in “Henry VIII.” even Dr. Butts of Gonville, Henry’s physician, is not omitted.
xv c.xvi c.
In the xv century we have some new names. Zouche is there still, and Scrope, and Bassett, and Beaufort, but there are also Langton, Stafford, Pole, Brandon, Stanley, and Babington. In the xvi century Stanley, Brandon, Stafford, Sidney, Audley, Bacon and Cecil, are all prominent names.
These various groups are not independent. The annexed pedigrees will show us that the Clares, Mortimers, de Burghs, Audleys, and Staffords had intermarried: that Valence and Chatillon, Mortimer,Grey, and Hastings, formed one family; that the Beauforts, through John of Gaunt, joined the house of Edward III. to the house of Tudor, and were allied to the Staffords, Nevilles, and Stanleys; that the Scropes were allied to the Mortimers, the Staffords again to the family of Chatillon and to the Woodvilles: the Sidneys to the Brandons, the Brandons to the Greys, the Greys to the Woodvilles;[427]and that the xvi century Audleys intermarried with the Greys as the xiv century Clares had wedded with the Audleys; that through Mortimer, Stafford, Hastings, and Grey, the founders—Clare, de Burgh, Chatillon, Valence, Beaufort, Stafford, Woodville, Audley, and Sidney—form one clan. Before we proceed with the list of well-known Cambridge names from the xvi century onwards, let us notice in passing that certain titles have always clung to Cambridge, no matter who bore them: such are Pembroke, Huntingdon, Buckingham, Suffolk, Leicester.[428]
Table I.[429]
Table II.
Table III.
Table IV.
The names of great Cantabrigians hardly ever appear singly in the annals of the university, and as there are family groups among founders so there are also among its other benefactors and distinguished representatives. Babington, Bacon, Beaumont, Bryan, Cavendish, Cecil, Coleridge, Darwin, Devereux, Fletcher, Greville, Harvey, Langton, Lightfoot, Lytton, Manners, Montague, Neville, Newton, Palmer, Shepard, Taylor, Thackeray, Temple, Wordsworth—all form such groups, and have provided the university not only with great names, but with a family history.
No name has clung more steadily to Cambridge than Babington—it was known there at least as early as the xv century, and was that of the 25th abbot of Bury in the time of Henry VI. Henry Babington was vice-chancellor in 1500; Dr. Humphrey Babington built the two sets of rooms on the south side of Nevile’s court known as ‘the Babington rooms,’ in 1681, and his family have given prominent members to the university ever since. One of the Bacons was the last Master of Gonville, and Nicholas Bacon and his two sons were at Corpus and Trinity. Beaumont is a Peterhouse name; but in the reign of Elizabeth Dr. Robert Beaumont was Master of Trinity and vice-chancellor, and a Beaumont was Master of Peterhouse
Temp. Ric. ii. 1380-1397.
in the xviii century. Towards the end of the xiv century William Cavendish was fellow and master of the same college, and John Cavendish had been chancellor in 1380. In Gray’s time Lord John Cavendish was at Cambridge, in the next century HenryCavendish the scientist; and the connexion of this family with the university has never been severed.
The Cecils appear at Cambridge with the rise of Burleigh’s family in Elizabeth’s reign, and they were connected with the Bacons a family which also came into prominence at the same time; the great Bacon was Burleigh’s nephew, and the Cecils were kinsmen of other celebrated Cambridge men—Cheke, Hatton, Howard, and the founder of the Brownists. Moreover one of the early Cecils had been made waterTemp. Hen. viii.bailiff of Whittlesey (‘bailiff of Whittlesey mere’) and keeper of the swans in the fen district. William, first Lord Burleigh, was born in his mother’s house at Bourn—the place which gave its name to the barony held successively by Hereward, Picot, and Peverel. The third and fifth lords married with the Manners, the sixth with a Cavendish. Both the Cecils of Elizabeth’s time were chancellors of the university; Burleigh’s eldest son Thomas Earl of Exeter and Lady Dorothy Nevill his wife gave no less than £108 a year to Clare Hall, and ‘Mr. Cecil’ was moderator when James visited the university in 1615. Darwin had been preceded at Cambridge by old Erasmus Darwin, botanist and poet, the ‘Sweet Harmonist of Flora’s court’ as Cowper calls the ancestor of the man who gave us the great harmonizing hypothesis of the century.[430]Fletcher is another Cambridge name. Fletcher Bishop of London was at Corpus, so was hisson the dramatist; Giles the brother of the bishop, one of Elizabeth’s ambassadors, was at King’s, his two poet sons were Cambridge men, and there was a scientific Fletcher at Caius in the xvi century. Greville or Grenville is another Cambridge name: Fulke Greville, first Lord Brooke (whose mother was a Neville) was at Jesus College, so was his cousin the second lord, whose father had been sent to Trinity in 1595 by Robert Devereux Earl of Essex with a letter of advice on Cambridge studies written by another old Cantabrigian, Bacon. The first Lord Lansdowne in the time of Charles II. and Sir Bevil Greville (ob. 1706) were both at Trinity.
The Suffolk name of Hervey is another which has always figured in Cambridge—there was Hervey Dunning in the xiiith and Hervey de Stanton in the xiv century; a Harvey succeeded Gardiner and Haddon in the Mastership of Trinity Hall, of which he was a considerable benefactor, and was vice-chancellor in 1560, Gabriel Harvey, a kinsman of Sir Thomas Smith’s, was a fellow of this college and of Pembroke, William Harvey was at Caius. Langton[431]is an ancient and honoured name; it was that of the 6th Master of Pembroke, of John Langton chancellor of the university in the time of Henry VI., of Thomas Bishop of Winchester, and other Cambridge men. Lightfoot is a name which was known in the fen before the Conquest, and was that of the eminent CambridgeHebraist two hundred years before the Bishop of Durham studied there. The Lyttons have been known at the university since the xvii century, Sir Rowland Lytton the antiquary was a member of Sidney Sussex College[432]and Bulwer Lytton was at Trinity Hall. The Montagues and Montacutes have been important since the day when Simon Montacute Bishop of Ely befriended Peterhouse. Through the xvii century, the first Master of Sidney Sussex, Richard Bishop of Norwich (the antiquary), the 2nd Earl of Manchester, and Charles Montague (afterwards Lord Halifax) who, with Prior, replied to Dryden’s “Hind and Panther,” were all Cambridge men; and Sir Sidney Montague of Barnwell was one of Charles I.’s Masters of theA.D.1627.Requests. We have seen how the Nevilles intermarried with the families of Cambridge founders; Henry Neville was proctor, and vice-chancellor in 1560; Thomas Nevile was 8th Master of Trinity[433]and vice-chancellor, and 6th Master of Magdalene, where the name was again recorded in the last Master of the college (Lord Braybrooke). There was a Newton at Cambridge, 6th Master of Peterhouse, contemporaryA.D.1381.with Beaufort, Thorpe, Scrope, and de Burgh. In the middle of the xvi century another Newton was vice-chancellor; fifty years later Fogg Newton was Provost of King’s and vice-chancellor in the 8th of James I., and an Isaac Newton unknown to fameentered for Peterhouse about the same time as the discoverer of the law of gravitation entered Trinity. Palmer is another well-known name: a John Palmer was proctor in the reign of Elizabeth, Edward Palmer was fellow of Trinity in the reign of Charles I., and Edward Palmer Professor of Arabic, the sheikh Abdullah, was a Cambridge man. Skeltons have been found atA.D.1391.the university since a proctor of that name who flourished in the days of Richard II.; Shepards since the days of Elizabeth when there was a proctor of that name; Jeremy Taylor was kin to Rowland Taylor the Cambridge martyr; and Palmerston continued the tradition of the Temples. The Sternes had played a part in Cambridge before the days of Laurence Sterne;[434]Thackeray followed other members of his family to the university, and there have been Wordsworths at Cambridge ever since the poet went to S. John’s and his brother Christopher was Master of Trinity.
Other Cambridge names claim attention. There had been Latimers and Ridleys at Cambridge before the Protestant martyrs. Aldrich belongs to the xvi and xvii centuries. Byngham was not first heard of when the parson of S. John Zachary built God’s House, but is the name of no less a personage than the first Master of Pembroke (Thomas Byngham), and another William Byngham was proctorA.D.1570.in the year when Whitgift was vice-chancellor. One of the Bassetts was proctor as late as 1488, and RogerAscham’s father in the xvi century was steward to the great Yorkshire house of Scrope; Mildmay, the founder of Emmanuel, was brother-in-law to Sir Francis Walsingham, and was allied to the Ratcliffes.[435]There were Days before the Days of King’s; the Harringtons—allied to the Montagues, Stanleys and Sidneys—were Cambridge men; a Hatton was proctor in 1499 and later Provost of King’s, and the Hattons of the time of Elizabeth and her successors—who intermarried with the Montagues—were all benefactors of Jesus College.[436]The northern Percies have often taken part in Cambridge affairs, and Percy Bishop ofA.D.1451.Carlisle was chancellor of the university in the time of Henry VI. Roger Rotherham was Master of King’s Hall before the days of the great chancellor. There were Somersets at Cambridge from the days of Henry VI., and a Stafford was proctor the year Henry VIII. beheaded